Investors Should Expect BCE to Raise its Dividend Soon

BCE Inc. (TSX:BCE)(NYSE:BCE) is a great dividend-growth stock that might be about to raise its payouts yet again. With the company’s earnings due in early February, unless BCE had a very bad quarter, investors should expect an increase in the dividend.

February is when the company has typically announced rate hikes in the past. In 2017, payouts of $0.6825 were hiked more than 5% to the current quarterly payment of $0.7175. The year before that, we saw another 5% increase in February, and the same happened the year before that.

If BCE is going to follow suit with its previous increases, then we should fully expect to see quarterly payouts rise to a little more than $0.75.

Despite concerns of cord cutting and online streaming giants Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) stealing away customers, BCE still saw its revenues rise more than 5% in its most recent quarter. Profits were also up from a year ago.

There are no alarm bells going off for the company that would suggest it will have a bad quarter, and that’s probably the only scenario where BCE wouldn’t raise its payouts.

Currently, BCE’s stock pays a dividend just shy of 5%. The share price has dropped 2% in the past three months, which has also pushed the dividend yield up.

This could be a great time for investors to lock into a high, growing yield that could see an increase very soon. BCE is a safe buy that will give investors decent returns coupled with growing dividends.